Blue Sunset by Baltes & Zäyn

Before a work of art, there is a vision. In the case of the BLUE SUNSET album, it is a shared love of science fiction and horror films and books, anime and kaiju eiga, which energized and inspired the childhood imaginations of musicians STEVE BALTES and LUCIAN ZÄYN. Though one grew up near Cologne and the other in Manila, half a world away, both were fascinated by surprisingly similar tropes. They were anime, Star Trek, Star Wars, Ultraman, Godzilla films and the British Hammer Film Productions and Roger Corman horror films. It is no surprise that, later in life (with Bladerunner looming large), they share a love of more current cultural phenomena, like Neon Genesis: Evangelion and the Lovecraft Country HBO series. BLUE SUNSET revels and basks in the brilliance of these works which are reinvented, expanded upon and reinterpreted as exuberant exercises of fan fiction.

BLUE SUNSET navigates the thin line between transcendence and oblivion, ecstasy and obliteration, Life and the Void, like the superlative works of art which it honors and celebrates. Surreal apocalypses, ecstatic romance, cosmic and existential horror and love stories, both sweet and toxic, pure and impure, alternate kaleidoscopically at a breath-taking pace. The songs about Neon Genesis: Evangelion, the animé, Your Name, Lovecraft Country, The Colour out of Space and the Hammer and Corman horror movies feature all the above. Reading between the lines, BLUE SUNSET affords a fascinating glimpse into a burning hunger for transcendence and life, and the call of the void, both intertwined and contending for supremacy, in battle, set against a simmering backdrop of complex relationships and a rich spectrum of gender and skin color.

BLUE SUNSET is a concept album appreciatively honoring the grand tradition of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Genesis' The Lamb lies down on Broadway, a scintillating panopticon of the Olympian heights and Stygian depths of the humanity and inhumanity of Man – an exploration of human nature; by turns tender, scathing, bitter, savagely satirical, but always straight from the heart.

The first two pieces about Evangelion (GODSHATTER, Apocalyptech) feature the personal, emotional apocalypse of a mecha warrior child, Shinji, against the backdrop of the divine and technological Armageddon orchestrated by his father, Gendo, who is driven by initially noble aspirations which are eventually perverted. The third piece (A Song of your Name), a delicate paean to the wistfully beautiful animé, Your Name, about a death-defying, tender young love, affords some respite. After that, there is some comic relief offered by a rollicking, cineramic, guitar-driven song about kaiju terror à la Pacific Rim, Back! Back! Kaiju Attack! Evangelion returns with The Dark Design, which revisits a possible ultimate hellscape of Gendo's apocalyptic apotheosis of mankind. The darkness deepens with The Colour out of Space inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's gripping story, a fitting prelude to the four Lovecraft Country songs, each dedicated to a superbly realized female character of the series, conveying its message of hope, empowerment, and heroism in the face of cosmic horror, which stands in for the real-life savagery of racial prejudice and injustice. In Lovecraft Country, the cosmic horror is vanquished and the protagonists travel the multiverse, literally and metaphorically.

These four songs are the heart of BLUE SUNSET: Orithyia Blue Glides along the Diamond Frontier, Wonder Woman, Dee, Christina and her Eternity of Firsts and Ruby, Uninterrupted. "To a caterpillar what is death, but a gorgeous, dancing butterfly…"

Hippolyta and Diana (Dee) of the first two songs are mother and daughter in the America of the early Fifties, named after the Wonder Woman (Diana Prince) and Amazon queen, (Hippolyta, her mother), of pulp comics fame. Dee, a gifted draughtsman, idolizes her mother whom she reinvents as the space-faring comic strip heroine Orithyia Blue. Hippolyta then comes across a magical multiverse machine which allows her to travel the continua as a real-life Orithyia Blue, later forsaking her adventures to return to her daughter. In her absence, Dee is persecuted and literally magically cursed by racists who she fearlessly stands up to in a manner no child ever should be compelled to. Christina of the third song defies her White Supremacist, sexist father, a wizard whose family stole their magic from their African slaves in generations past, by learning magic herself. On her relentless quest for immortality she meets and woos Ruby, an Afro-American blues singer, by initially disguising herself magically as the blonde and virile William. Christina and Ruby eventually fall in love with their real selves while still using magic to trade gender and race to find empowerment as women in a sexist and bigotted era. Ruby is slain by Christina when Ruby betrays her to save her family. Dee, recovered from her magical curse and given a mechanical arm, kills Christina in revenge for making a blood sacrifice of her cousin.

The last song, The Lights of Castle Frankenstein, another satirical, tongue-in-cheek piece, closes the album on a humoristic note.

BLUE SUNSET – on Mars, the red planet, the sunsets are blue. Yet again, the cosmos manages to subvert expectations. Finding joy in such surprises instead of letting them strike fear in your heart is the definition of living bravely and living well. That is the soul of BLUE SUNSET.

ECHOZONE is a music label for independent music and covers a wide range of styles between electronic, ambient, gothic, wave to rock and metal influences. The label was founded in 2005 and is a division of BOB-MEDIA company. ECHOZONE offers label management, marketing, promotion, distribution and in combination with BOB-MEDIA's licensing, publishing, booking and video production departments.

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